Some of the spin in these responses is beyond ridiculous.
We are talking about a few abilities with different themes that will provide advantages in certain types of content, which is something that already exists across the game’s roughly 30 specs.
Just chill. It’s not some type of horrible punishment. The Covenants look incredibly cool overall, some design tweaks may be necessary over time, but that is almost always the case with any new feature.
It might not be “all that bad” but there is no real positive about the way they are implementing it.
Even if it is only a relatively minor negative why do it? Why not do something positive instead?
Right now it seems the only thing Covenants will do is make everyone varying degrees of unhappy. The only people that will actually be happy about it is because people are unhappy.
That’s nonsense, and part of why the spin is ridiculous.
The Covenants are exactly the type of feature that many players will enjoy because they are focused on progressing and customizing their characters, rather than making up absurd hyperbole about other players’ sadism because they think that somebody else might have a small advantage over them in certain types of content.
It is going to feel bad to have the aesthetics you want and the abilities you don’t. Or the abilities you want and the aesthetics you don’t.
Or always knowing you are sub-par in pvp because you made the raid choice.
It might be only a little unhappy, but pretty much everyone is going to be unhappy to some extent.
I get the idea. It’s not a complicated concept.
As I said higher in thread, it’s exactly the same type of argument that has been made about any sort of advantage provided by a particular choice, however small.
The cosmetics being linked is a bit of new wrinkle, but that also doesn’t matter much, imho. They all look cool, and WoW players tend to have multiple characters.
I understand feeling that way about it, but it’s silly to try to turn it into the evil casuals oppressing the noble min/maxers.
Concretely, the Covenants are a cool idea, it’s fun to think about what package of abilities and cosmetics fit your character best. Balance is a concern, of course, but it should be about making a cool idea work at endgame.
I don’t understand why it’s silly when many of us are open about enjoying and supporting the system precisely because it oppresses the min/maxers.
Personal preference isn’t something to blame.
But if a some kind of system is wholly supported by mostly Nationalist Racists, Murderers, Dictators, etc., along with also primarily benefitting those parties - it causes great alarm about the system as a whole.
This is a really great way of summing up the big picture.
Any benefit gained for people that don’t support it because it makes people unhappy could still be achieved from a system that allows for ability/covenant swapping. There’s nothing about a fluid system that prevents players from sticking to one choice and progressing/customizing their characters within that single choice.
They want you to make a choice that is a step down from your faction choice.
You can technically change it if you hate it, but they want it to be a more long lasting important decision.
I do NOT want blizzard to have covenant choices be willy nilly.
I also do NOT want blizzard to cause issues with levels of power. I.e. I want to do pvp, M+, and raiding. I do NOT want to be SOL cause I’m picking Ardenweald.
I do like a lot about the covenant system, and personally I would pick one and just ride it out. But it does feel a bit cruddy that others are negatively impacted by the system. Especially when those of us who stick with a single covenant don’t actually get anything from our decision to be loyal.
Sadly you can’t have it both ways.
First, Blizzard isn’t well known for balancing things well.
Second, with the number of specs/classes/talents and content combinations - I think it’s unfair to expect that of them in the first place. It’s a losing battle just from looking at the vastness of the game, along with looking at their track record.
There are ways of making choices matter, loyalty matter, and power level balance not a big deal.
Plenty of alpha testers have suggested methods of making the covenant choices less bad or at least viable for various styles of play given the soulbind system.
For an arbitrary example, let’s say your covenant choice is a very single target thing and no aoe. Soulbinds could up your aoe given your choices here.
So while covenant A is king at aoe, covenant C doesn’t automatically get you banned from rated battlegrounds.
Plz note arbitrary examples more to explain a fear of being locked out of content.
Hey, back in the day, we called those “specs,” “classes,” and “roles.”
Wouldn’t it be better to have an AOE ability AND an AOE oriented soul bind tree? If you’re trying to use the soul bind system to offset the deficiency in the ability - it seems like the player would still come out behind and that would influence players to discriminate.
Seriously why the hell do people take delight in denial of choice.
Depends on what the finalized result is.
Maybe choosing to do one thing really well will be OP. Example, balance druids had aoe abilities in their single target rotation in Legion cause that was what was highest output at the time.
Some abilities are a little crazy like the jump behind someone ability when they out of line of site.
That one is stupid OP and could be a “if u don’t have this, then don’t bother queuing” kind of dealio
The main hope for me is to not end up in a scenario where I’m considered a bad choice to bring to a rated battle ground.
My guildies will let me go to raids and M+, but if I can’t compare/keepup with others there’s a possibility my ability to do high end content is dead too.
That’s honestly pathetic
There are literally players in this thread delighting in it “punishing min maxers”
A lot of players will hate covenants because it ties player power to story choice.
Blizzard just trying to push bad game design on us, I mean how can they implement something that is the opposite of the rest of the game. Whats next, gonna force us to stick to one spec for the rest of the game? You should be able to earn all the abilities and choose the right one for the content you’re doing, I mean who tires to force a square peg through through the triangle hole?
You understand that you are completely transparent, right?
Anyone casually browsing this forum over the past few months would know that, and it can be seen in your posting history.
For that reason, your comments carry no weight and couldn’t possibly convince anyone. Certainly not a developer.
Covenant choice is a meaningless choice unless every expansion after Shadowlands continues the Covenant storyline. No player choices in this game have ever mattered so Blizzard should just stop acting like they are giving us a choice. The way that we’re going to be able to change our Covenant is going to be either a long grind to boost played time, or a gold sink to get us to buy tokens plain and simple.